An Okie teacher banished to the Midwest.
"Education is not the filling a bucket but the lighting of a fire."-- William Butler Yeats

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Slang-o-pedia, volume 1: Drug slang

As we prepare to reenter the hallowed halls of academe, it's time to start getting ready to decode all the slang you will hear flying around your head. So today, I am going to attack slang references to drugs and alcohol. C'mon --we heard 'em as kids, and today's teens and yes, pre-teens, frustratingly do not always use the same terms we heard growing up. That's the point of slang.

Dextromethorphan (DXM): This is a drug contained in over-the-counter cough suppressants. After 900 milligrams, it becomes a hallucinogen. Synonyms for DXM include Candy, Dex, DM, Drex, Red Devils, Robo, Rojo, Skittles, Tussin, Velvet, Poor Man's X, and Vitamin D. "Tussin is a very popular name that’s has been catching on lately," says Pollock. "Cold medicine abuse is a very serious problem, from what I have seen, because it is so available."

Syrup heads: Users of DXM

Dexing: Abusing cough syrup. Synonyms include robotripping or robodosing because users tend to chug Robitussin or another cough syrup to get high.

Triple C: This stands for Coricidin HBP Cough and Cold. "The triple C or CCC is something that we are seeing a lot of, and that is specific to Coricidin, but anything with DXM is abused today," adds Kevin M. Gray, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

More Teen Drug Use Terms

Special K: A medication used as an anesthetic in humans and animals, ketamine is sometimes abused as a "club drug." It can cause hallucinations and euphoria in higher doses. Synonyms include vitamin K, breakfast cereal, cat valium, horse tranquilizer, K, Ket, new ecstasy, psychedelic heroin, and super acid.

Crank: The stimulant methamphetamine. Synonyms include meth, speed, chalk, white cross, fire, and glass. "Crystal methamphetamine is called ice," says Cleveland Clinic's Pollock. "Crystal meth is smoked, but meth can be injected, snorted, or taken as a pill," he explains.

Crunk: This is a verb that means to get high and drunk at the same time.

Snow: Cocaine. Synonyms include Charlie, crack, coke, dust, flake, freebase, lady, nose candy, powder, rock, rails, snowbirds, toot, white, and yahoo, according to Phoenix House. "After all this time, alcohol and pot are still the most used drugs by teens, but cocaine is really a strong third, especially with females, because of the weight issue," says Janice Styer, MSW, a clinical coordinator-addictions counselor at Caron Treatment Center in Wernersville, Pa. "The drug of choice among women with eating disorders is almost invariably cocaine." A stimulant, cocaine can decrease appetite.

Kibbles and bits: The attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug called Ritalin. It is sometimes also referred to as pineapple, says Pollock.

Teens and Drugs on the Web

Cheese: This is a hazardous mix of black tar heroin and Tylenol PM or other medicines containing diphenhydramine). It looks like grated parmesan cheese -- thus the name. There were more than 20 teen deaths in Dallas and surrounding neighborhoods that have been attributed to Cheese since it was identified in 2005.

Candy flipping: This term refers to a high that’s achieved by combining LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) or acid with ecstasy. "The new thing, especially with kids on the Internet, is which drugs are best and safest to combine," explains Styer.

A new study by the Caron Treatment Centers found that one in 10 messages on the Internet involved teens seeking advice from their peers on how to take illicit drugs. The messages were posted on common online message boards, forums, and social network sites such as MySpace.com.

When it comes to teens and drugs, "You will never know everything, but you don’t want your kids to think you are an idiot," Styer says. "You need to keep communication open and talk to your kids about the dangers of the Internet."

Then there's this drink I heard a kid talk about: Lean, which is Sprite mixed with Promethazine w/Codeine VC and a Jolly Rancher-- this is usually purple. Also called sizzurp or aunt jemima or drank or purple.

Another dangerous pastime is huffing, or inhaling the propellant in aerosol cans. Other words referring to this activity are: fweep, gas, gasoline, ropies, or Scotch Guard. (And watch the use of Wite-out.)

Surprisingly, there are those terms which still have some usage that you may know.

For marijuana: weed, pot, smoke, grass, herb, reefer, bud, ganja (thanks, Bob Marley!), chronic, dank, hydro or dro (for hydroponically grown pot), skunk (a particularly potent smelly form), buddha, spliff (half pot, half tobacco cigarette), blunt (hollowed out cheap cigar with pot inserted), bone (and by the way, just don't ever use this word, because it has about eleven meanings, and none of them are good), j or jay (for joint), fattie (see blunt), bowl (for the little place on the bong where you put the drug to smoke it), and pipe (for a device used to smoke with-- also a dangerous word for other reasons). Then there's 420, which is, according to some of my students, both a day in April upon which to smoke pot all day, and the time of day to smoke pot, and the etymology of this term is just fascinating.

10 Comments:

We have kids going to "Pharm Parties" where pharmaceutical drugs are poured into a bowl and taken at random during parties. The dangerous mix of drugs, known and unknown, has caused quite a few scary situations of late.

God... this post scares the crap outta me. I'm not even 30 and I'm so far out of the loop it's not even funny. It's time like this that I'm glad I teach first grade. (It's also times like this that make me pray fervently that my first graders know even less about this stuff than I do.)

Thanks for this information. I do a program called Don't Be An Ostrich and need to stay current - things change so quickly - I am hearing more about "cheese" and kids dying... Do you know anything about kids using E and Viagra??? I heard it is calle Hammerheading???

I am a little amaze because I haven’t heard most of those words in my life. I think there are more names that are being used that haven’t been identified or there are other kinds of life threatening drugs that haven’t been identified. I pity those that get addicted because they are just wasting their over some junk.

What's On the Bookshelf? (And stacked on the floor, and in the loo, and next to my bed, and in my backpack....)

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace

The Stripping of the Altars, by Eamonn Duffy

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher

The Big Over Easy, by Jasper Fforde

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins

Here, Bullet, by Brian Turner

Random Thoughts

"Read-ity read read read."-- The Ramblin' Educat

"Personally, I think for democracy to exist, opposition is key. History seems to bear that out. One sign you're doing a good job is when the only argument the extablishment can muster is "shut up" and variations on that theme.-- NYC Educator

"The only thing worse than having no taste is having no shame."-- via Mamacita

"The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a Courthouse is because you cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal, Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery & Thou Shall Not Lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment."-- Molly Ivins (via Mike in Texas!)

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."-- Dean Wormer, Animal House

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."-- John Steinbeck